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Before we listen to our next Oingo Boingo tune, let's first have a look at this odd prelude, which features a film written by Danny Elfman's brother, Richard, and the musical score composed by Danny...

While they were active, Oingo Boingo was one of my favorite local bands. They became world famous with tunes like Weird Science, but we are going to skip their bigger hits today and listen instead to three of their lesser-known musical numbers, starting up the morning with this little gem, titled Cinderella Undercover:

I disliked this band when they first charted but after the passage of twenty years, they've started to sound pretty good. The group is The Go Go's and the first song of the morning is Our Lips Are Sealed:

Well, technically Saturday is the last day of the week, so we will have three songs from the new wave era this morning, staring with the Flock of Seagulls performing The More You Live, The More You Love:

It's kind of hard to believe these songs are considered oldies now, but I've got three of them from the New Wave era, all fronted by female singers. We'll start out with a song that sounds the most dated of the trio (but still pretty good) from The Mo-dettes, titled White Mice:

The guitar is a little out of tune too but it isn't too noticable until the end. Songs will be posted today at 8 and 10 am and 12 noon.

Our final song of the day from The Vapors also comes from their second album, Magnets, but unlike many of the other tunes on the record, this one is not so dark and gloomy. So, to end the morning on a higher note, let's have a listen to Live at the Marquee:

We do have one more song this evening as part of our post-atomic series, although the music is in complete contrast to what we have shown thus far.

Well...that is the title of the song, although the lyrics embrace anything but romantic love. Yet it's one of my favorite tunes from The Vapors, and thus it will be our second to the last cut of the morning.

Despite the theme of this fan video (it was the only one with a good sound), I'd never associated this song with John Hinckley. But Johnny's in Love Again came out around the same time as his psychotic encounter with the President, so I suppose it's possible.

The Vapors were hammered by critics after the release of Magnets, mainly because of the dark themes that pervaded the record. This song, which has the same title as the album, references the Kennedy assassination, and is probably one of the tunes that drew so many critics' ire. That said, it's a great song (and it is nowhere near as dark as our final number later this morning).

I have to admit, I was a little irked a couple weeks back when I saw our guest editor, Schwabman, refer to my favorite 80's new wave band, The Vapors, as 'one hit wonders', although I suppose it's true by American standards. The band released two albums, both of which were packed with good songs, and so today I'm going to do an artist focus on the group, even though they broke up some 30 years ago. Since the band got very little airplay, there is not much in the way of videos, so most of today's music will be accompanied by still life images. Our first number this morning, Silver Machines, comes from The Vapors' second album, Magnets:

We'll have a Vapors tune every hour from 7 am until noon today with a post-atomic musical piece by Emilie Simon at 5 pm.

We are going to close our new wave segment this morning with another tune that came out in 1979, the song Making Plans for Nigel by XTC. I went out and bought the album when this number came out only to find it was released as a single instead:

The video was recorded at a very low volume--you'll have to turn the sound up rather high to get the proper fidelity.